


Brightblades

by crossingwinter



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (nor can she believe the glee with which she wrote this), ABO without ABO, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, in which the author cannot believe that she wrote this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-07-07 20:52:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15916029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: In which Rey learns about a startling kink of her new boyfriend, and in which, much later, they roleplay it.





	Brightblades

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SafetyThirst](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SafetyThirst/gifts).



> @safetythirst won a giveaway I was running on [my tumblr](http://crossingwinter.tumblr.com/reylo) to celebrate a follower milestone. This is the fill for the prompt that they sent along!

It starts with a text that comes through on Rey’s phone from Ben when she’s in a team meeting, lighting up the screen.

_ I was thinking about an ABO au.  Kira’s the alpha and Kylo’s the omega.  I know you think that he’s— _

And that’s it.  The rest is cut off and Rey has  _ no _ idea what any of that means.  She knows Kira and Kylo are the main characters in the new  _ Space Battles  _ movies, but she has no idea what ‘an ABO au’ is _. _

Five minutes later another text pops up on her lock screen again.

_ Hi sorry that wasn’t for you.  Meant to send that to my SB chat.  You can delete. _

Too casual, she can tell.

Ben plays it too casual sometimes, especially when he’s nervous.  Which is all the time. And him playing it too casual usually results in a catastrophic lack of casual.  

Which is how, when she gets out of her meeting, she ends up googling  _ ABO au  _ at her desk.

_ Ben. _

_ What the fuck. _

She can see his read receipts.  She knows that he’s seen her text, and knows that he’s probably trying to figure out what to say next.  Because she is too. She has no idea what to say next.

She’s been seeing Ben for about three months now.  He’s not the  _ smoothest _ boyfriend she’s ever had.  Rose has actually used the phrase “walking trash fire” and Finn has told her that he sometimes fears for her safety when she’s around him.  She gets that. She really does. Especially when he’s drunk, Ben can lash out, and unfortunately for his interactions with her friends, he’s been drunk both times he’d met them.  When it’s just the two of them though—well, Rey loses her head a little bit. He’s supportive—if sardonic—and challenging—but in the good way, not the bad way, always trying to get her to believe in herself, to push herself—and Ben with his shirt off is something that Rey spends a little too much time thinking about on the train to work every day.  The side she sees in him, the side he only shows around her—that’s the part of Ben she likes most. He’s even confessed to her that he wants to try and be more like that around everyone, but he doesn’t know how. He has to learn. He’s working on learning, and, what’s more, she sees him succeeding the more he tries.

And then there’s this motherfucking ABO shit he seems to be into.

_ Let’s talk tonight.  I’ll cook. _

Rey takes a deep breath.

Ben knows her well enough to know she will literally never refuse his cooking.  Not ever. Not even a little bit ever. Growing up hungry means she never refuses food, and Ben’s a good cook.  He’s even—in his sweeter moments—promised to cook for her whenever and without notice if she just wants home-cooked food.  At the time it had seemed sweet. Right now it feels a bit like,

_ Are you bribing me? _

_ It’s not what you think it is. _

_ Is it weird sexist animalistic rapey bullshit? _

_ Because that’s what I think it is. _

_ Let’s talk tonight. _

_ Ben. _

_ Rey. _

She doesn’t reply.  She is seething. She is just seething.  

The original text he’d sent had seemed positively playful about it, but the fan pages she’d just read...

_ Are you going to break up with me via text message? _

She doesn’t expect that text at all.  She stares at it, and her anger fades all of a sudden.  She can see Ben’s vulnerability in his words, as well as his angry determination that she  _ hear _ them.  She can see the way his eyes are hardening defensively while he rolls his jaw nervously.  

_ No, I’m not. _

_ I’ll see you after work. _

She mutes the text thread from him.  She doesn’t want to think about this anymore—especially not when she’s about to be on phones for the next two hours.  But if there’s one thing Rey’s good at, it’s putting a smile in her voice while angry customers call up to yell at her about whatever problem they are encountering.

She keeps her phone turned over until she gets off her shift at around five thirty pm, finishing up an email ticket and handing it over to the night support team before taking a deep breath and looking at what Ben sent her.

_ I’ll see you tonight. _

Then, much later.

_ Thank you. _

Then, thirty minutes ago,

_ I’m making steak and potatoes unless you want something else. _

Rey rolls her eyes fondly.  He’s really buttering her up because he knows how much she loves red meat and starch.  She has joked that all he needs to do to ever get a blowjob is just fry up some potatoes for her.  

_ He’s trying,  _ she thinks to herself staring at the words.   _ And he’s scared.   _ She swallows.   _ I’m scared too.   _ She really likes Ben—has even wondered idly if she’s falling in love with him.  Love scares her. Being left behind scares her. Leaving someone she might be in love with scares her.  

But she will absolutely dump Ben’s ass if he turns out to be a sexist pig, she’s not putting up with that garbage, she’s fought too hard in her life to have to deal with it.  

She clings to the hope that it is, as his text earlier had claimed, not what she thinks.  

_ That’s great, thanks. _

_ About to get on the Red Line. _

_ See you in a bit,  _ he replies instantly.

The Red Line takes her up to Ben’s nice apartment in Lakeview, which he can easily pay rent on with his Software Engineer’s salary.  Ben, in his more encouraging moments, had told her that tech support is absolutely an avenue to get to engineering, if that’s what she wants.  And she really does want it. It’ll be a hard road, sure, and going to a bootcamp will be faster and infinitely more expensive, but tech support will give her skills to get her more skills to get her more skills.  When he’d said it, she’d actually believed that she wouldn’t be compensated—poorly—for doing emotional labor for the rest of her life and she could really try to build something. 

She can smell him cooking when she knocks on the door, and a moment later he opens it.  

His jaw is tight and it’s the only time that she’s come to his place where he doesn’t immediately bend to kiss her, pull her into his arms and hold her for a hot second before leading her into the kitchen.

Rey hates that.

So she steps into his chest and presses her face to his sternum for a moment, hugging him, and trying to fight off thoughts like,  _ if he’s gross and this is the last time  _ because she does  _ not _ even a little bit want to go down the road of losing someone she—

He presses his lips to the top of her head and tucks her under his chin and he takes a deep breath before letting go of her.  He still hasn’t said anything.

They make their way to the kitchen and the steaks are on the stove.  He’s boiled up potatoes for mashing which he gives to Rey as a task while he finishes cooking the steaks because Rey likes mashing—especially after the long phone shift she had today.  He has already put together a salad and it’s not long before they are digging into dinner. 

Neither of them has said a word.

Rey takes a bite of steak before asking, as bluntly as she can, “Ok so how isn’t it what I think it is?”

“It can be,” he says at once.  “Trust me—I’m not going to pretend it’s not.  There’s some really fucked up shit in the trope that people don’t question at all—and yes, it can get rapey.”  Rey raises her eyebrows because she hadn’t expected him to cede that point, and he continues, hastily, “What I’m trying to say is that that’s not stuff  _ I _ like about the trope.”

“Not all men?” she asks at him dryly and he rolls his eyes.

“With ABO there are two extremes: there’s the one that takes the trope too seriously and ends up compounding everything that’s wrong with Patriarchy with everything that can go wrong with the trope.  And I agree, there’s so much that can go wrong with the trope. And then there’s stuff that uses it as a way to explore gender and sexuality through allegory, that questions, and—”

“And that’s what you like?” she asks him.

He nods.  “And trust me, it’s hard to find stuff I like.  Although that’s true of fanfiction generally. I’m an asshole of a reader.”  She’d wondered if he reads fanfiction. He gets very excited about  _ Space Battles _ in a way that some of the other support folks at work do, and she knows at least Kaydel writes fanfiction.  

Rey takes another bite of steak, chewing thoughtfully.  He’s saying all the right things. He’s probably been preparing for them all day, his anxiety skyrocketing.  

But actions speak louder than words, she supposes, and Rey’s job is to get diagnostic.

So she gets diagnostic.

“So what do you like about it?  You’re the one that brought it up in your chat.”  His cheeks go bright red and he avoids her eyes. “Ben, we’ve had sex,” she says, rolling her eyes.  

“I like the security of it,” he says.  “When it’s done right, it makes the characters feel safe with each other.  Like there’s possessiveness, but there’s trust there too. And the trust is…” he swallows and looks at her.  “It’s wonderful.”

“So it’s trust and kinky animalistic sex?” Rey asks.

“And praise kink.”  She frowns, and he explains.  “Praising someone while you’re having sex with them.  Like—not dirty talk exactly, though it can be—but like—” he’s clearly fumbling for words.

“I get it,” Rey tells him, because she does.  And, more importantly, she understands why he’d like that so much.  “Trust, praise kink, kinky animalistic sex.” 

“Feeling like you found someone special,” he says and his voice is so quiet and Rey’s mouth goes a bit dry when she sees the look in his eyes and she loves them in any emotion.  They are so expressive—whether in anger or in gentleness. And right now he’s staring at her as though—well—as though he’s found someone special. “Like there’s no one in the whole world who can understand what you’re feeling, but that person does.  They get it. They feel it too.”

He leans forward and she feels his foot nudge against hers under the table.  “I’m not saying it can’t be gross,” he says. “The world is a gross place, and the Internet is forty times grosser than the world.  I’m saying that when it’s not gross, it’s great. Which is sort of true for relationships more broadly, I suppose. Like real ones. Without ABO designations.”

Rey eats more steak.  “So,” she says at last, “You think Kylo’s the Omega and Kira’s the Alpha?”

He cuts into his steak for the first time since they’d sat down.  Rey hadn’t noticed he hadn’t been eating. She sees his shoulders relax, and a smile plays at his lips as he says, “Look, Kira wants to ride him on her terms and you know it.”

Rey almost chokes on her steak.  She can’t even begin to deny that, and doesn’t even try as she takes a sip of water.  Ben’s positively grinning now. “And Kylo—well, we all know he just wants to be held and told he’s safe and he’s ok and that he’s not some evil monster the way Ekons has groomed him to be.  So like—maybe he goes into heat and needs to be told he’s safe and ok a lot.”

“And doing that might help Kira heal the hole that her abandonment left in her.”

“Exactly.”

“So it’s about the characters,” Rey says slowly.

“And the kinky animalistic sex.  Don’t forget that.”

“Ok, so if Kira’s the Alpha and Kylo’s the Omega—can she knot him?  It’s a verb, right?”

“Yeah, it’s a verb,” Ben says.  He’s now happily eating his potatoes.  “And that sort of depends on whoever’s writing the fic,” he shrugs.  “Though people rarely write women as Alphas.” There’s something about his tone that makes Rey cock her head and ask, 

“Which you disapprove of?”

“People can do what they want,” Ben says.  “I’m not a fic writer. They can write what they want to write.”

“But you want more of Kira topping the fuck out of Kylo.”

“Yes,” he shrugs.  “I do.”

“Is this because you want me to top the fuck out of you?”

Now it’s Ben’s turn to choke on his steak.

They’ve had sex.  Quite a fair bit of it since they started a month ago, actually.  But it’s been very, well, vanilla. Rey hasn’t minded that. Especially because, unlike other vanilla sex she’s had, Ben’s sure to get her off—sometimes more than once.  But they’ve never had sex where she’s topped the fuck out of him, and until this moment, she had no idea that that might be something he was into.

And the longer it takes him to reply, the redder his ears get, the more convinced of it she is.

“Yeah,” he says slowly at last.  “Yeah, I’d like that. A lot, actually.  But if you’re not into it, it’s not like—”

“I think I could find it in me to enjoy it,” she says, a smile playing at her lips.  

He arches an eyebrow.

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah.”

 

-

 

She starts topping the fuck out of him.

When she’d first met Ben, she’d been hyper aware of the fact that he was about ten years older than her, that he was angry and edgy, snarky and sometimes a bit of an asshole.  “Boiling over with toxic masculinity,” was how Rose had phrased it. “I just don’t want you to get hurt,” Finn had nodded in agreement, arms crossed over his chest. She knows they’re trying to protect her.  She loves that they’re trying to protect her. She’s not used to having people in her life who want to protect her.

She tells that to Ben one night after she’d edged him for about forty-five minutes while sitting on his face and then made him come so hard that he hadn’t really been lucid for about five minutes.  He pulls her against his chest and she rests her head over his heart and he whispers to her, “Do you feel safe with me?”

“Yeah,” she replies.  “I think so.”

He squeezes her tighter.  “Good.” Then, “I feel safe with you too.”

She sucks a hickey onto his chest because she likes to.  And she knows he likes when she leaves those little bruises on his skin, like she’s claiming him or something.

Three months turns into six months, turns into eight months.  Rey starts pegging Ben about twice a week. Ben gives her a key to his apartment, and tells her to use it anytime.  Finn and Rose start, slowly, to warm to Ben, who admits he has calmed down more than he had thought possible because of how steady his relationship with Rey has been.  Rey renews her lease with Finn and Rose, but splits her time at Ben’s because he can always lure her there with the promise of food, sex, a shorter commute the following morning, and being held as she falls asleep.  The trailer drops for the next  _ Space Battles  _ and Ben spends about nine days getting into fights with strangers on the internet about Kira’s and Kylo’s relationship while Rey applies for a new job because she’s tired of this one and there’s a more technical-looking support role at a company that has better benefits.  

“Text me when you get out,” Ben says, kissing her when she makes her way to the door on the day of her interview.  He is working from home today, and is still in his underwear. “And good luck.”

She uses the memory of his pecs, covered in her love bites, to bolster her through a skill test and then two hours of technical grilling by the leads on the team.  It has always been far too easy when she’s nervous to let dark and dire thoughts of her own worthlessness seep into her mind—a terrible and dangerous thing to happen during an interview.  But Ben believes in her even when she forgets how much she believes in herself and that keeps her confident until she is released with a “We’ll be in touch soon.”

_ I’m out, and headed back to you. _

She sends her text from the Red Line, and Ben doesn’t reply right away.  That’s fine though. Just as she can be slow to reply when she’s on phones at work, he can be slow to reply when he’s lost in his code.  

Which is part of why she’s surprised when she lets herself into his apartment and hears him moaning in a particularly telling way.   _ It’s the middle of the workday,  _ she thinks with a grin as she drops her messenger bag onto his sofa, tugs off her hoodie, and makes her way quietly into the bedroom.

Fuck, she’ll never be over the sight of him like this, his boxers around his knees, his eyes closed, his cheeks flushed, his hand stroking up and down his hard-on while he worries his lip with his teeth.  He looks positively blissed out, and Rey stands there in the doorway, not making a sound. She’s watched him masturbate before. She hadn’t really liked it then, possibly because she’d been masturbating and it was sort of lost on her— _ why _ they’d both masturbate instead of just touching each other.  But it had been a thing to try, and it wasn’t like it had been a failure or anything.  This is different, though. This is private, this is him not expecting her home, which means he’s been going at it for a while.  That would certainly explain the flushing around his chest. She’s good at edging him, but he’s  _ really _ good at edging himself.  He likes denying himself pleasure.  He doesn’t think he deserves it.

_ He does, _ she thinks as he makes himself whimper.   _ He’s so good.  So much better than he thinks he is. _

And words she hasn’t thought about in months flit across her mind.   _ Trust.  Praise kink. _

“You deserve to feel good, Ben,” she murmurs and his eyes fly open and he sees her standing there and he doesn’t even really have time to react because he’s spurting cum all over his still bare chest in long white ropes.  She crosses to the bed and bends her head to his, kissing him before licking his cum off his chest. He groans at the sight of it. 

“Please,” he whimpers, and she has no idea why he’s whimpering.  

“What is it?”

“I—” his ears go bright red.  His eyes go to his computer and she frowns.  The screen is dark.

“Was bored at work?” she suggests, trying to finish his sentence.

“Yeah, lot of people out today,” he replies.  “And someone posted a really hot fic after that trailer dropped.”

Rey arches an eyebrow.  “Oh?”

“Yeah.”  Ben sits up and tugs his boxers back up his legs, the elastic snapping into place around his hips.  “You know that shot of Kira bearing down on Kylo with her brightblades?” 

“As if I could forget—I think you were hard for a day after seeing that.”

“Someone finally wrote a really fucking good Alpha Kira fic.”

“You’ve been wanting that for a while,” she says, her voice low.

“There’ve been a few,” he says.  “But not like this one. Holy fuck, not like this one.”  Then he leans over and kisses her neck. “How’d the interview go?”

“It was fine,” she says.  “Hard, but they were nice and I don’t think I made a total fool of myself.”

“Good.”  He kisses her neck again.  She likes it when he kisses her neck.  It always gets her heart rate up. But today…

“Are you kissing my neck because you’re imagining scent glands there or whatever?” she teases gently.

He freezes against her and she reaches a hand up and runs her hands through his hair.  It’s a little greasy—he clearly hasn’t showered yet—and he closes his eyes against her touch.  He’s taking deep breaths, and slowly, he opens his eyes to look at her.

“I don’t think I was,” he says slowly, and she knows—because she knows Ben better than she ever would have thought possible when they’d started dating, because this year has been a year where he’s dug deeper into himself than he’s ever done before and she’s been there with him while he did it, because she can hear that flicker in his voice like the first time he’d asked her to ride his dick while he had a toy shoved up his ass—she knows what he’s going to say.  “But I want to.”

They’ve done role-play before.  Hell, they’ve role-played Kira and Kylo like ten times, and some other stuff as well.  Rey has wondered if Ben likes to get out of his own head sometimes. But this, she senses, is different.

Rey kisses him softly.  “We can try,” she says, and he his lips are on her neck again.  “But not right now. You have work to do.”

“There are two other people on my team who are in the office, there’s—”

“And send me that fic you were reading,” she says, pulling away.  “If we’re going to do this, I need to know what the fuck I’m doing.”

“I love you,” he whispers.

“I know,” she grins back.  “Do your job. I have homework to do.”

A few minutes later, Ben has sent her an email with no fewer than ten fic links, each with a detailed commentary about what he likes about each one and Rey settles herself on the sofa and begins to read.

 

-

 

_ Realistically, we can’t do this while you’re in “heat” though.  I love you, but your refractory period isn’t going to allow for that. _

_ You cannot just text me that in the middle of the workday.  I’m going to explode. _

_ It’s a power move and you love it. _

_ …True. _

_ What are you thinking, then? _

_ I’m not sure.  This is your kink, and I’m trying to ease into it in a way that doesn’t make me feel gross. _

_ Should I beg for you or something?  Will that help? _

_ I know how you like it when I beg. _

_ That’s payback for me texting you about heat while I’m at work, isn’t it. _

_ Obviously. _

_ What if we’re a mated pair already? _

_ Hmmmmm _

_ The fic you sent me didn’t have any mated pairs already.  They were all pushing towards mating, but they weren’t there yet. _

_ Is that something you want, or is that something you think I would be more comfortable with? _

_ I’m not sure. _

_ I’ve never RP’d ABO before. _

_ Yeah, most people just try BDSM when they’re bored _

_ …I mean I wouldn’t say no to that.  But let’s try one thing at a time. _

_ Little did I know when we met that you’re a kinky motherfucker. _

_ Hey you’re right here with me.  It was your idea to try those anal beads, little Miss “I love daisies they’re such happy flowers.” _

_ Anyway, back on topic _

_ Thoughts about being mated already. _

_ Is this you asking me to marry you because honestly Ben I expected more romance. _

_ Very funny quit deflecting _

_ I’m thinking _

_ Yeah.  Yeah, I think I could do that. _

_ But to like Heighten The Mood, maybe I’ve been gone for a while? _

_ Because I’m an Alpha, I have a significantly fancier high-paying job than tech support so maybe I was out of town for work. _

_ Have you heard back yet? _

_ They said to give it a week. _

_ I’m trying not to let my anxiety get the better of me by looking at knotted dildos on amazon and seeing if they can fit into my strap-on belt. _

_ Ben? _

_ Did I break your brain or are you in a meeting? _

_ Bennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn _

_ I don’t really know what I did to deserve you, because I really really don’t, but I love you. _

_ I love you too. _

_ And I think that works. _

_ The out of town or the dildo with a knot? _

_ Or both? _

_ Both. _

_ You’re fighting a hard-on at work aren’t you. _

_ I’ve gone into a phone room and am taking deep breaths. _

_ You’re a monster. _

_ Yes I am. _

_ And I’m gonna fuck you so hard when I get home from this business trip, so you’d better be ready for me, Omega. _

 

_ - _

 

They switch into the role-play in their texts for the rest of the week, the way they have when they role-played Kira and Kylo.  It’s weird, Rey finds. Ben calling her Alpha…doesn’t really feel bad, but it’s strange calling him Omega. She’s not sure she likes that.  She’s not sure she can do it in bed, but she’s determined to at least try. 

He tells her that he’s gotten a new bed-protector—one that’s more resistant to liquids—and that he tested it with some soda which didn’t make it through to the mattress.  He also tells her that he’s been so wet for her, which is weird, and which she assumes means he’s bought a shitton of lube because it’s in the same conversation as the bed-protector and one of the comments he’d made about the dirty fanfics he’d sent her was  _ all the slick just fuck me up.   _

_ How on earth are we going to pretend that’s coming out of his ass,  _ she wonders, but decides that’s a problem for them to work out when she’s there.

They’ve decided that she’s “coming home from her business trip” on Friday, because it’s the end of the workweek and that gives them both time to long for one another.  She goes home to her apartment in Rogers Park every night, watches TV with Finn and Rose and curls up alone in her bed. Her bed, which doesn’t smell like him. She knows how much she likes the smell of him, but she hadn’t really noticed in this way until she’s pretending that she’s far away from him, just longing for him, trying not to let the loneliness crush her.

“Did you and Ben fight?” Finn asks Thursday night as she’s brushing her teeth.  

“Hm?”

“You’ve just been here all week, and that’s unusual.”

Rey spits out her toothpaste and rinses her mouth.

“I’m going to his place tomorrow,” she says casually, trying not to think of the bright red dildo that she’d gotten from Amazon earlier today and which does fit into her strap-on belt quite nicely.  It’s already in her bag to take with her to work and Ben’s. “He’s been out of town.”

“Oh, ok,” Finn says.  He looks relieved.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

She gives him a look and he says, “I was just worried you’d fought, or he’d upset you and you were pretending it’s fine.  And I was worried about having to go beat him up for you because he’s huge and I’m not scared but I am realistic and would need to strategize.”

“I’d help,” Rose calls from their bedroom.

“You don’t need to beat up Ben.  Really.”

“Yeah, I know.  He’s—” Finn pauses.  “He cares about you a lot.  And I think you’re a good influence on him.”

“Even though you shouldn’t have to be,” Rose calls again, not bothering to pretend she’s not eavesdropping.

“He’s working on himself,” Rey tells them both.  “But I’m glad I’m there for it. I think he’s making more progress because I’m there with him.”

“As long as he’s doing the legwork,” Rose says.

“He is.  I promise.  I just fuck his brains out and hold him.  I’m not doing all his emotional labor.” She does enough of that at work.   _ Please _ , she thinks at the recruiter who’d promised to give her a call tomorrow with an update.   _ Please just let me have been good enough so that I don’t have to do phone support ever again. _

“I’m glad.”  Finn’s voice is thick, emotional.  “Honestly, you’ve seemed so much happier since you’ve been with him.  And he still bugs me sometimes, but the fact that you’re happy is a big deal.  So as long as he’s treating you well and doing you right—”

“ _ Finn _ !”  They don’t talk about sex lives.  It’s an unspoken rule. Finn grins.

“Then I can like him from afar.”

Rey’s throat gets tight and she steps into Finn’s arms, hugging him tightly.  

 

-

 

Friday moves so slowly.  Rey is staring at the clock on the corner of her computer screen all through work.  It ticks by so slowly, as anticipation curls in her. What if the recruiter doesn’t call the way she said she would?  What if she calls and tells Rey she didn’t get the job? 

_ At least I’ll have Ben tonight, _ she thinks.  Though, it occurs to her with a twist to her stomach, that this much-anticipated role-play might not happen if she’s devastated by a job rejection.  She won’t feel particularly Alpha then. She’ll feel gutted, and want to curl up into a ball, and let Ben take care of her while she mopes all weekend.

They timed this poorly.

She glances at her phone again.   _ Please,  _ she begs it silently.

_ Please. _

At 4:32, it rings, and Rey leaps out of her chair to find a stairwell or something.

“Hello?” she says breathlessly.

“Hi Rey, it’s Larma.  Sorry to keep you waiting, is now a good time?”

“Yeah—yeah.”  Rey swallows. Her throat is so dry, her voice doesn’t sound like her own.

“We’d like to offer you a position—” and the rest is a blur.  The salary is significantly higher than what she’s making now, and she won’t have to do phone support and, if she plays her cards right, after a year there’s a training track for software development.  Rey doesn’t even have to consider when she squeaks “Yes,” into the phone.

She’s dazed as she packs up her things, shoving her work laptop into her backpack next to her strap-on.  She barely even notices the rush hour crowds on the Red Line. 

She texts Finn and Rose to tell them she’d gotten the offer and their responses are delighted.  

She doesn’t text Ben. 

Because she’s going to his place and is going to ride him until he can’t breathe.

She puts her phone away with an  _ I’m celebrating tonight with Ben.  Don’t worry,  _ knowing that Finn and Rose get the drift from that.  She closes her eyes for a moment and takes a deep breath.  

It’s hard to get into an Alpha headspace when you’re crammed on the Red Line at rush hour, but Rey does her best.  Alpha. Coming home from a long and successful business trip. With a promotion.

She smiles, and shifts to make more room for the folks transferring onto the train at Fullerton.

She lets herself into Ben’s apartment and smells him cooking in the kitchen.  It smells like he’s cooking something elaborate, but then again anything that’s more than a just add water recipe is elaborate to Rey.  The air is full of the scent of garlic and onions and immediately her mouth waters. 

She tiptoes into the kitchen and sees him standing there in pajama bottoms and an undershirt that shows off the muscles of his back quite nicely as he stirs something on the stove.  He’s humming to himself, and whether or not he actually knows she’s there she can’t tell. So she crosses the room and wraps her arms around his waist, pressing her nose between his shoulder blades—where his mating gland would be, if he had a mating gland—and pressing a kiss there.  “Something smells good,” she says quietly.

Ben puts the spoon he’s using to stir the food around with down on the stove and turns around in her arms, wrapping his around her and bending his head down to kiss her.  “I’ve missed you,” he murmurs into her lips. “Welcome home.”

She shivers.  Increasingly his apartment does feel like home, quite as much as her place up in Rogers Park.  But the way he says it now solicits something new in her, an unexpected  _ home is you  _ that makes her stand on her tiptoes and kiss him again.  “It’s good to be home,” she tells him again. 

Her stomach grumbles at exactly that moment, and Ben smiles down at her.  “Just in time.”

“Is it done?”

“Just about.  Set the table?”

“On it.”  And she lets go of him, even though she doesn’t really want to, and gets bowls and spoons out for them since it looks like a bowls and spoons kind of meal he’s made.

“How was your week?” he asks.  “Did it go ok?” She can’t tell if he’s asking in the role-play or asking as Ben.  It’s a lot less obvious than when they’re pretending to be Kylo and Kira. 

“Long,” Rey says truthfully, going to the sink and filling cups with water.  “I’m glad to be home.”  _ I’m glad to be here with you.   _ And then, because she can’t help it, because she needs him to know just how bursting with excitement she is about it, she says, “I got the job.”

“Rey.”  Her names leaves his lips in a happy hiss and a moment later his arms are around her and his lips are on her temple and she lets herself sink into his chest.  “I knew you’d get it. I could feel it. You can do anything you set your mind to.”

She smiles up at him and stands on her tiptoes to kiss him again.  “I love you,” she whispers.

“I love you too.”  His arms tighten for just a moment.

“And I’m going to fuck you so hard you’re going to feel dizzy tonight.”

He stiffens and for a split-second, she worries that he had broken out of the role-play to celebrate with her.  But then she feels his cock twitch behind her and she reaches a hand up to run her thumb along the side of his neck, stroking where she thinks a scent gland would be.  He half-whimpers, and then Rey gently pushes him towards his seat at the table. “So you’d better eat,” she whispers in his ear before kissing his neck again.

“Yes, Alpha,” he whispers and there’s a glint to his eyes that makes Rey stop and kiss him hungrily.  

They eat quickly.  She watches Ben closely as they talk.  He’s behaving the same way he usually behaves.  She can’t tell if she’s surprised by that or not.  He’s just as animated as he ever is, and when she says something he disagrees with, he digs his heels in the way he usually does.  It’s like nothing has changed.

Except that he’s got his foot pressing further under the table than usual, his calf pressed against her leg.  It’s not footsie or anything, it’s just contact, presence, a reminder that he’s there—a reminder that she’s there too.  It makes her wetter than it should, considering that they’ve completely broken away from the plan of her coming back from a long business trip because he wants to know more about the job details she’d gotten from Larma on the phone that afternoon.  He praises her, soothes her, makes her know that she absolutely deserved it, that they’ll be lucky to have an Alpha—there, he hasn’t broken out of the role-play completely—like her on their team. She goes with it. Because this is Ben. And Ben has always made her feel like fighting for herself is as important as fighting for others.

They finish dinner, putting the dishes in the dishwasher and the rest of the stew he’d made in the fridge for later.  Then Rey twines her arms around his neck, standing just far enough away from him that she can feel the heat of him without actually touching him.  She looks up at him. 

“Are you ready?” she asks him quietly.   _ For me?  For this? _

“Please, Alpha,” he murmurs, and she is standing just far enough away from him that she’s not touching, but his dick is already getting hard in his pajama bottoms and she feels it brush against her stomach.

She brings his lips down to hers, nipping a bit at his lower one, sighing into his mouth when he opens it to her tongue.  He tastes like the stew they’d just eaten but that stew had been delicious so Rey doesn’t think that’s a bad thing at all.  But more importantly at all, he tastes like Ben underneath it all. Her Ben. Hers.

She’d found him.  And he’s hers.

She keeps kissing him but untwines her hands from around his neck, rubbing the backs of her fingers in that same spot where she’d pretended his scent glands were earlier.  “I love how you taste,” she whispers. “You taste like home.” And she kisses him again. “I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed the taste of you this week.”

“I’ve missed you so much,” he says, his hands on her hips, holding her tightly.  As she’d spoken, he’d pulled her into him, closing the distance between them, and she can feel his erection right between their stomachs, thick and long and hot.  She rocks up and down on her feet, rubbing him between them and he whimpers. 

“Just the thought of you makes me feel better,” she tells him.  “All this week, thinking about you, how much I wanted to make you feel good, how much I love how you feel.”  His eyes flutter closed and his dick twitches. “You do so much for me, and I’m going to make sure you know it.  You deserve to know the good you do.”

“Please, Alpha,” he moans, and the grip on her hips is so tight it might bruise.  

“Go into the bedroom,” she tells him.  She doesn’t let go of him, though, and he doesn’t let go of her.  “Or are you ready for me now.” To make sure that he knows what she means, she drops one of her hands from his neck to squeeze his ass.  

He kisses her and pulls away slowly, his hands leaving her hips only reluctantly.  

She shuts off the light in the kitchen and makes her way back to where she’d dropped her bag.  She strips off her shirt and pants and underwear and digs out her strap-on, which she fastens securely around her hips.  Through the open bedroom door, she can hear Ben moving around as well. 

Her heart is racing as she secures the knotted dildo in place.   _ I really hope he’s ready for this,  _ she thinks as she looks at it.  The knot is bigger than she’d thought it would be—certainly thicker than anything they’ve tried before.  But she also knows that Ben has some plugs that he uses sometimes and she doesn’t know if it’s bigger than those.  It’s made of silicon, also, and a little bit squishy. And if it’s too much, there will be plenty of other ways for them to do this.  

The sounds in the bedroom have stilled.  Rey finds him on the bed, on his hands and knees, his ass positively glistening in the light of the bedside lamp he’s used so much lube.

Rey’s mouth waters.  There’s something about seeing him like this, his back to her, presenting himself to her—she doesn’t get that much.  Usually when she pegs him, he’s face up because she likes his face, likes kissing his chest, likes feeling his cum on her stomach after she’s brought him to climax.  

Realistically she knows that her legs moved to take her to the bed, but she was so distracted by the sight of his ass like that that she really doesn’t remember it.  She kisses her way along his spine to between his shoulder blades, where she sucks his skin between her teeth. He moans, and she sees his fingers tighten on the bed sheets.  “I can’t believe you’re mine,” she whispers, kissing him there. “Do you know how lucky I am to have you? That you wanted me?”

“Rey,” he moans out as she runs a hand down his ribcage and over his ass, finding his hole and testing it.  “God Rey—Alpha—”

“You smell so good,” she murmurs into his back.  “You smell like home, this room smells like us, and sometimes I never want to leave it.”  The words are out of her mouth before she realizes how true they are, how—when that sometimes when they lie there together, the room smelling like sex and sweat, it makes her feel so safe, and secure.  She loves the way he smells, the way they smell together.

“Me too,” he moans as she kisses her way back down his spine.  “I—” She probes him with one hand and with the other, strokes along his dick, and whatever it was he was going to say gets lost in a groan so deep in his throat that his whole body seems to shake from it.  She finds his prostate and presses it lightly and he whimpers even more. 

“So wet for me,” she whispers.  He really had done a good job lubing himself up.  “I’ve missed you so much. I’ve missed making sure you know how good you are.”

He groans, and she pulls her fingers out of his ass and presses the silicon tip of the dildo against him.  She loves how much noise he makes when she fucks him. He’s not wordy, necessarily, just lots of noise, as though he can’t control himself, as though she makes him lose control.  

She keeps stroking his dick.  It’s hot, and heavy, and the skin is so soft and smooth.  She circles his tip as she eases the dildo inside him about halfway.  She’ll keep the movement gentle for the time being. She doesn’t want to hurt him with that knot at the base.  She keeps stroking him as he begins to rock his hips back against her, trying to get the dildo to go in deeper.  

He freezes the first time the knot presses against him.

“Do you want my knot?” she whispers and watches as every single muscle on his back seems to contract.  “Do you, Omega?”

“Please, Alpha,” he moans.  “I want it so badly. I want you, I want all of you.”

“You have me,” Rey says, and her heart squeezes as she looks down at his back, stretching on for forever.  She can see where she’d kissed that spot between his shoulder blades. He’ll have a hickey there tomorrow. She likes that.  She likes that she marks him. She likes that he likes that she marks him. 

_ Mine. _

_ Yours.  I’m yours too. _

She circles the tip of his dick with her thumb as she presses the knot into him.  He pants, and she sees his hands clenching and unclenching.

“Too much?” she asks sharply.  She does not want to hurt him—whatever game they are playing.  

“Keep going,” he replies.

“Are you sure?”

“Please Alpha.”  His voice is strained and Rey keeps rubbing his dick, trying to get him to relax more.  Slowly, so very slowly, he stretches around the knot. And then it’s buried inside him. 

“So good for me,” she whispers to him.  She bends down to press her chest against his back, to kiss that spot on his back again.  “So good.”

She tests moving her hips and he whines, dropping his head into the pillows.  “Ben?” she asks. He’s quivering. “Are you trying not to come on my knot, Omega?”  He doesn’t reply. He just keeps quivering. “I want you to come,” she tells him. “I want you to feel good, I want you to know how good you make me feel.  It’s ok.” 

And he comes with a long groan, spurting onto the bed beneath him as he shakes from it.  He hadn’t lasted long at all, but Rey doesn’t care. She’d told him months ago that she likes it when he comes fast, when she can make him fall apart.  

She makes to pull out of him but he chokes out a “No, not yet,” and she pauses.

_ Right, knotting’s supposed to last a while.   _ So she unstraps the harness she’s in and leaves the dildo where it is before rolling Ben onto his back, tucking his legs up so that it won’t push too deeply into him.  She bends her head over his limpening cock and runs her tongue over the tip of it. He inhales sharply and she stops. “I wanted a taste,” she murmurs, kissing his stomach just above the line of his pubic hair.  Then she clambers around him and curls against his side. 

The sheets are wet from his cum underneath her, and ordinarily, she would avoid it, but the whole point of this is to get as filthy as possible, right?

“You were so good,” she whispers to him, and he turns his head to her with a kiss.  “How does my knot feel?”

He’s breathing heavily and she runs her hands over his chest as though trying to soothe him.  “So good, Alpha,” he tells her. His cheeks are flushed, his eyes are glassy. He looks far more dazed than he usually does after he comes.  Rey grins at him. He manages to smile back. 

“You’re blissed out,” she tells him.

“I’ve missed you,” he replies.

“I can tell.”  It starts out as a teasing comment but halfway through, she can sense that he’s serious—far more serious than she is and the words change in her mouth.  She kisses him, her tongue slipping between his lips and rubbing against his so very gently. She runs her hands through his hair, brushes her thumb over his cheek, and rolls over so that she’s lying on top of him, the way that Kira—in the one Omega Kira fic that Ben had sent her—did when she was knotted to Kylo.  She buries her face in his neck and feels his chest rise and fall underneath her, feels his heart pumping against his ribcage. Knotting is also about cuddling. This kink of Ben’s is about emotional safety as well as physical intimacy. That, she can give him. That, she’ll always give him.

She doesn’t even realize she’s rubbing her face back and forth against the crook of his neck until he starts doing the same.  His hand strokes its way along her spine, up and down until he dips it down to slip two fingers into her. She sighs as he pumps his hand lazily in and out, stroking her walls in a way that makes her hum contentedly into his neck.

“That feels good,” she tells him.  He adds a finger and she sighs and buries her face into his chest.  “You always make me feel so good.”

And then his fingers are gone and she lifts her head long enough to see him lick them, looking at her pointedly.  “You taste so good,” he says and Rey cocks an eyebrow.

“Do I?

“Mmmhmm.”

She slides up his body slightly to whisper in his ear, “Does my greedy Omega want more?”

“Please Alpha.”

So she sits up and clambers up him a little more, settling her knees on either side of him and resting her hands on the headboard of his bed.

“Fuck you’re so wet,” he tells her as he slides his tongue along her.

“All for you,” she replies with a sigh.  “You do this to me you know.” He pauses mid-lick, and she can tell he wants to ask.  “I’m just so lost in how good you make me feel sometimes.”

His tongue twirls over her clit, and Rey lets out a moan.  His hands are under her ass, his fingers massaging into her skin in time with the movements of his tongue.  Her heart is pounding in her chest before too long. 

“Ben,” she sighs as her head falls forward.  Her eyes have been mostly closed but now she opens them.  “Do you know what it does to me to see you like this—buried in me like this?  Do you know how beautiful you look?” She’s babbling, she knows she’s babbling, but she needs him to know, part of what he likes about this is the praise kink.  And she’d be lying to herself if she didn’t enjoy it herself. 

“You feel so good, Ben, your tongue is magical.  Can you feel how hard my heart is racing?” He groans into her cunt and she’s close.  Her whole body is pulsing in time with her heart, in time with his tongue, and when she comes with a cry he drinks her down until she’s too sensitive and has to pull herself away from him.  He doesn’t let go of her hips though and she looks down at him.

“Omega?” she tries to sound stern—she really does.  But having just come, the weirdness of calling him  _ Omega _ hits her like a truck.  She tries not to let it show though.

“You taste so good,” he repeats.  “And you’re so beautiful like this, Alpha.  I love seeing you over me like this.” The words spill out of him in a rush and Rey smiles down at him.  

“We’re well matched then,” she teases, easing her hips out of his hands so that she can lie on his chest again.  “I like looking down at you like that.”

“Having power over me,” he teases right back, but it doesn’t land quite right and Rey sits up on her elbows, growing suddenly serious.

“Feeling supported by you,” she counters.  “You support me, Ben. Do you know how much that means to me?  I feel taken care of with you.”

She sees recognition in his eyes—knowledge of her past, knowledge of her fears and dreams, all of it.  

He guides her lips to his with two fingers under his chin and now he tastes like her when his tongue slides along hers.  “I love taking care of you,” he tells her seriously. “I love making you feel good.”

“You do it so well,” she begins but he’s still talking and her breath catches when he says, “And I love that you take care of me too, more than I think you realize.”

Her lips crash to his, her hands bury themselves in his hair and his arms wrap tightly around her, as he deepens the kiss.  If it had started off heated, rushed, desperate, it starts to burn more steadily as, for the first time that night, she feels Ben take control.  His lips move slowly, purposefully against hers, his hands rub their way along her skin until she’s feeling positively relaxed. She loves the warmth of him underneath her, the way his hands seem to know exactly where she wants them, the way his lips are so perfectly soft against hers.  She loves how soft his hair is, how firm the muscles of his chest are, the tickle of his breath on her upper lip as he kisses her, and kisses her, and kisses her, and the world stops existing around them.

She could go on like this forever, she thinks.  Consuming him, letting him consume her, her heart full of happiness and her body warm and content.

But it doesn’t go on forever because she feels him start to stir underneath her and one of his hands leaves her back and it takes her half a moment to realize what he’s doing, but the rhythmic motion of his arm is all too telling.

“Not done?” she whispers, sitting up.  His cock is half-hard behind her, and he’s pumping it in.  He smirks up at her. It’s not exactly frequent that they push through his refractory period like this.  Either he’s really into this kink or this whole experience is as hot in its meaningfulness for him as it is for her.  “Needy little Omega.” She bends her head once to kiss him before sliding herself back and taking his hand off his dick, guiding it to one of her much neglected breasts.  He squeezes it, and twists her nipple lightly between his fingers for a moment before he sits up, his abs rippling underneath her so that he can suck on them.

He groans at the movement and Rey realizes she’d completely forgotten that that dildo was still shoved up his ass.  “Too much?” she asks him again, reaching behind her to rub around it. 

“I want you to ride me while it’s still there, Alpha,” he says, blushing.

“But is it too much?”

He wiggles slightly underneath her and she raises herself up on her knees to let him find a position that works for him.  When he settles, reaches between them and pulls his dick up so that she can rub her slit along it. “You’ll tell me if it’s too much,” she commands.

“Yes Alpha,” he replies at once and then his lips are on her nipple, sucking greedily and she threads her fingers once again through her hair and begins to rock her hips against his, dripping slick over his cock and relishing in the friction of his teeth at her breast, of the ridges of his veins against her clit.  

“You feel so good,” she murmurs for what feels like the millionth time.  “You’re so good, Ben. This is exquisite.” She tilts his head back from her breast gently so that his eyes lock with hers.  “Do you know that? Do you know how good you are?”

He swallows, and his eyes are a little bright when she bends her lips to his again.  

She’s still kissing him when she reaches between them and guides him into her.  They sigh together and she murmurs, “This is home. You’re my home.”

That is the mantra that fills her mind as she starts to ride him in earnest.   _ I love you.  I’m home. I love you.  I’m home. I’m safe. I love you.  I make you feel safe too. You always make me feel so good.  I love you. I’m home,  _ until she’s breathless, until she’s trembling and twitching and gasping, until her fingers are pulling at his hair they’re gripping him so tightly.  

“You’re my home too,” he whispers to her as he turns them over, and in her post-orgasm daze, she hadn’t realized just how much she’d really been saying as she’d let herself come apart, and she holds onto him tightly as he thrusts until he collapses on top of her.  She cups his cheeks as she kisses him, she nips at his lip gently, but mostly she just breathes in time with him, deep and lazy contented breaths until she gently pushes him off her. She crawls down the bed and massages his ass gently for a moment before easing the dildo out of him.  He hisses, and his ass gapes at her after she’s pulled it out and thrown it onto a towel on the floor. She kisses one of his cheeks before climbing back up to nuzzle herself into his arms.

“Hi,” she murmured, kissing him again.  

“Hi.”

“How’d that stack up to other role plays?”

“Five out of seven,” he replies without missing a beat.

“Sixty-nine.”

“We could do that next time.”

“True.”

“What about you?” he asks her, trying to sound casual.  But he never succeeds at ever sounding casual when it matters to him.

“I liked it more than I thought I would,” she admitted.

“Seemed that way.”  He sounds relieved, and he presses a quick kiss to her forehead.  “Enough to do it again sometime?” Again with the trying to sound casual.

She grins.  “Yeah, I could be convinced,” she tells him.  “Especially if we layer it with some Kira/Kylo.”

“You’re gonna make me hard again if you keep saying shit like that.”

“Search your feelings, you know it to be true.”  

She squeaks because he’s rolled on top of her again and kisses her until she’s breathless again.  


End file.
